TYPEE
A monologue from the
novel by Herman Melville
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life During a Four Month's
Residence In a Valley of the Marquesas with Notices of the French
Occupation of Tahiti and the Provisional Cession of the Sandwich
Islands to Lord Paulet. Herman Melville. New York: Wiley
& Putnam, 1846. |
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CAPTAIN: Now, men, as we are just off a six months'
cruise, and have got through most all our work in port here,
I suppose you want to go ashore. Well, I mean to give your watch
liberty today, so you may get ready as soon as you please, and
go; but understand this, I am going to give you liberty because
I suppose you would growl like so many old quarter gunners if
I didn't; at the same time, if you'll take my advice, every mother's
son of you will stay aboard and keep out of the way of the bloody
cannibals altogether. Ten to one, men, if you go ashore, you
will get into some infernal row, and that will be the end of
you; for if those tattooed scoundrels get you a little ways back
into their valleys, they'll nab you--that you may be certain
of. Plenty of white men have gone ashore here and never been
seen any more. There was the old Dido, she put in here about
two years ago, and sent one watch off on liberty; they never
were heard of again for a week--the natives swore they didn't
know where they were--and only three of them ever got back to
the ship again, and one with his face damaged for life, for the
cursed heathens tattooed a broad patch clean across his figure-head.
But it will be no use talking to you, for go you will, that
I see plainly; so all I have to say is, that you need not blame
me if the islanders make a meal of you. You may stand some chance
of escaping them though, if you keep close about the French encampment,--and
are back to the ship again before sunset. Keep that much in
your mind, if you forget all the rest I've been saying to you.
There, go forward: bear a hand and rig yourselves, and stand
by for a call. At two bells the boat will be manned to take
you off, and the Lord have mercy on you!
MORE
MONOLOGUES BY HERMAN MELVILLE |
